Political figures on both sides of the isle have condemned Mr. Jones’ event. Sarah Palin called the gathering,”an unnecessary provocation” and that “Book burning is antithetical to American ideals.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was “disrespectful, disgraceful act.” Even the military and the FBI have publicly stated that this event puts Americans, soldiers, and American embassies in risk.

Clearly, there is a great deal of mistrust and fear concerning Muslim activities in America. The recent Muslim community center near Ground Zero is a hotbed of tensions and this burning of Korans event only adds fuel for the fire. Vandals defiled a local mosque. No doubt this national news story only fueled local vandals.

I whole heartily call for Mr. Jones and his church to stop this ridiculous event. I call all Americans to say “no” to this event. Though things like this are protected under free speech, it is clearly offensive to Muslim Americans. Why worry about offending Muslims?

Jesus was mindful of offending others. Jesus was questioned about paying the temple tax. Christ stated that he did not need to pay the tax, but:

24After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?” 25“Yes, he does,” he replied. When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own sons or from others?” 26“From others,” Peter answered. “Then the sons are exempt,” Jesus said to him. 27“But so that we may not offend them, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.” – Matthew 17:24-27

Jesus says, “However, not to give offense to them…”. In direct context, this scripture has to do with paying the temple tax and not Muslims. However, Christ, being the Son of God, did not want to offend those collectors for the temple. In a general application, Christians would benefit from this scripture because Jesus did not want to give offense to a group of people who held an opposing view point. Christians have a lot to learn about reaching out to people of other faiths. Evangelicals have prided themselves as Great Commission Christians, who are charged to make disciples and baptize all the nations.

Mr. Jones, the old saying goes, “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” Your little church of haters is not embodying the peace of Christ or Christ’s message of making disciples. I may not agree with the message of Islam, but I’m not interested in burning Korans or actively offending Muslims with a message of hate. Mr Jones, your rhetoric of hate and intimation is not what makes Christians Christian. Burning books, no matter how much we disagree with the message, is clearly a memory from history that contains of aggression, oppression, and bigotry.

Writing for the Washington Post’s On Faith, Gustav Niebuhr captures the inherent harm of this event:

As an American who deeply believes in free speech, I regard burning a book as a nearly unspeakably terrible thing. It is an assault on knowledge, and the societal value of allowing people to read and decide for themselves whether what they read has meaning to them. Torch a book and you at least symbolically deny your fellow men and women that freedom.

Let us not be people who actively seek to offend others by burning their books, committing acts of violence, or by our actions putting others in danger. We can disagree with ideas, beliefs, and ideologies but let us disagree in order that we do not provoke violence.

3 Responses

Unfortunately the news media has made this a world-wide issue. This guy and his 50 member congregation should have gone ignored. Oh, well, now a group, any group should probably step up and put on a big protest (for the media) as the book burning occurs in hopes of defusing this (media) nonsense.

The idiocy of delusional belief is amply illustrated by both the thin skinned nature of even the most docile Muslim (try using his god’s name as a curse right after he uses the the Christer god’s name the same way, and see how they react), let alone the more fundamental elements of that cultist belief system, and compare it to the blind stupidity of this one stinking supposedly Christian minister, who now threatens to bring the war to not only our troops and civilians around the world, but to the more moderate Muslims who will probably torch his church and hunt him down as part of the fatwa that is sure to be issued by fundamentalist Muslims, in response. There is a cave in Idaho in Terry Jones’ future if he does this deed, and it better be a deep one, because he is going to need it.

Myra – As I understand it, the story was already being picked up from the Internet to Egyptian TV, and there was blowback in the Muslim world. For the MSM to ignore it would have been disingenous, and news malpractice. The flag burnings and “death to Christians” chants over this issue started before the networks picked up on Terry Jones.

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